psych

5
Pages

62
Views

Unlock Document

School

McMaster University

Department

Psychology

Course

PSYCH 2B03

Professor

Hannah Holmes

Semester

Fall

Description

Psychology: The Science of Behaviour
Areas of psychological research:
• Physiological psychology - studies physiological basis of behaviour
o Learning, memory, sensory process, emotional behaviour, motivation,
sexual behaviour, sleep
o All observed in non-human animals
• Comparative psychology - studies behaviour of a variety of organisms in an
attempt to understand adaptive and functional significance of behaviour and
their relationship in evolution
o Inherited behaviour patterns – courting, mating, predation, aggression,
defensive behaviours, and parental behaviours
• Behaviour analysts – studies effect of environment on behaviour – effects of
consequences of behaviour on behaviour themselves
• Behaviour genetics – studies role of genetics in behaviour
o Examine similarities in physical and behavioural characteristics of blood
relatives
• Cognitive psychology – studies complex behaviours and mental processes
such as perception, attention, learning and memory, verbal behaviour,
concept formation, and problem solving
o Events that cause behaviour consist of functions of brain in response to
environmental factors
o Explanations involve characteristics of inferred mental process such as
imagery, attention, and mechanisms of language
• Cognitive neuroscience – attempts to understand cognitive psychological
functions by studying brain mechanisms that are responsible for them
(cognitive psychology + physiological psychology)
o Study people whose brains have been damaged by natural causes –
disease, stroke, tumors
• Developmental psychology – studies changes in behavioural, perceptual, and
cognitive capacities of organisms as a function of age and experience
o Study causal events that are as comprehensive as all of psychology –
physiological processes, cognitive processes, and social influences
• Social psychology – study of effects people have on each other’s behaviour
o Explore perception, cause-and-effect relationships, group dynamics, and
emotional behaviours (agressions, sexual behaviour)
• Personality psychology – attempts to categorize and understand causes of
individual differences in patterns of behaviour
o Look for causal events in person’s history – genetic and environmental
• Evolutionary psychology – explains behaviour in terms of adaptive
advantages that specific behaviours provided during evolution of a species
(use natural selection as guiding principle)
o Interested in studies of behavioural genetics and comparative psychology
• Cross-cultural psychology – studies effects of culture on behaviour
• Clinical psychology – devoted to investigation and treatment of abnormal behaviour and mental disorders
Fields of applied psychology:
• Clinical neuropsychologists – specializes in the identification and treatment of
behavioural consequences of nervous system disorders and injuries
• Health psychologists – works to promote behaviours and lifestyles that
improve and maintain health and illness
• Engineering psychologists (ergonomists or human factors psychologists) –
focus on the ways that people and machines work together
o Use knowledge of behaviour and its causes to help designers and
engineers design better machines
• Forensic psychologists – advise members of legal and justice systems with
respect to psychological knowledge
Philosophical roots of psychology
• Animism (animare – to quicken, enliven, endow with breath or soul) – belief
that all animals and all moving objects possess spirits providing their motive
force
• Psychology as a science is based on assumption that behaviour is subject to
physical laws
• Rene Descartes ( 17th century French philosopher and mathematician) -
advocated sober, impersonal investigation of natural phenomena using
sensory experience and human reasoning
o World is mechanical entity set in motion by god but runs on its own
o To understand world one must understand how it was constructed –
opposes church’s belief that purpose of philosophy was to reconcile
human experience with truth of god’s revelation
o Living things were machines affected by natural causes and producing
natural effects
o Reflexes - automatic response to stimulus not using mind
o Dualism – belief that reality consists of mind and matter with a causal link
between mind and physical housing (unique)
 Extended things – physical bodies
 Thinking things - minds
o Humans are set apart b/c they possess a mind which is not part of natural
world and therefore obeys different laws
o Mind controlled movements of body and body supplied mind with info
about environment (through organs)
 Took place in pineal body – small organ on top of brain stem
buried beneath large cerebral hemispheres
 Pineal body tilted causing flow of fluid to proper set of nerves and
initiated muscles to inflate and move
• Moving statues in Royal Garden served as inspiration
 First to use technological device as model of nervous system
th
• John Locke (17 century philosopher) – replaced Descarte’s rationalism (pursuit of truth through reason) with empiricism (pursuit of truth through
observation and experience)
o Rejected belief that idea were innately present in infant’s mind and
proposed that all knowledge must come through experience
o Model of mind was tabula rasa (clean slate)
o Knowledge developed through linkages of simple, primary sensations
combined to form complex ones
• George Berkeley (18 century Irish bishop, philosopher and mathematician)
– knowledge of events in world required inferences based on accumulation of
past experiences – we learn how to perceive
• Tried to fit nonquantifiable variable reason into equation
• James Mill (19 century Scottish philopher) – developed materialism (reality
can be known only through an understanding of physical world which mind is
a part of ) into system for looking at human nature
o Mind was also a machine, passive responding to body
Biological roots of psychology
• Luigi Galvani (18 tthItalian physiologist) showed Descarte’s hydraulic model
of body to be incorrect – showed muscles could contract by applying electrical
stimulus to them or to nerves attache